Not much happens at first beyond Julie’s amusingly testy, politely antagonistic exchange at check-in with the hotel receptionist (a dryly funny Carly-Sophia Davies). The women settle into their room, a cozy double lined with toile wallpaper and furnished with separate beds and some strategically placed mirrors that Hogg soon has wicked fun with. Mother and daughter are close, though Julie’s doting on Rosalind isn’t always welcome. Rosalind spends a lot of time in bed; she also seems untroubled by the mansion’s eerie noises, its spooky gloom and the loud rhythmic banging that keeps Julie up at night.
Given Hogg’s interest in memory and her expressionistic use of space it was perhaps inevitable that she’d make a ghost story, though “The Eternal Daughter” doesn’t as much conform to the genre template as playfully nip at its edges. It’s not for nothing that the first words you hear are “well, there was something strange….” Yet while Hogg comes at genre obliquely, she also makes great use of horror’s greatest hits by deploying creaking doors, billowing curtains and ominous shadows. And then there’s the pale-gray face at a window that Julie sees at night while out walking the dog.
The mother and daughter, their differences, similarities, tenderness and love are the story, which Hogg fills in with chatter, reminiscences, precise details, private rituals and lingering looks. You see how Julie methodically, and with a hint of odd urgency, unpacks her luggage, and how Rosalind daintily removes a tablet from a pillbox. And while you may shriek in mock-horror at some mother-daughter passive-aggression — “What do you think, Mum?” Julie asks of Rosalind, who answers “What do you think?” — Hogg doesn’t peel away the character’s psychological layers. Their mysteries, as she will tenderly reveal, lie elsewhere.
Notable effort has gone into visually distinguishing Julie and Rosalind beyond just their hair and clothes, including the use of some discreet makeup and careful lensing. Even so, the characters look more conspicuously alike than not, a resemblance that underlines their bonds, familial and otherwise, even as it evokes the figure of the doppelgänger, another horror staple. In classic examples, the doppelgänger serves as a sinister, even monstrous double (Dr. Jekyll, meet Mr. Hyde). Here, the doubling can be subtle, but it does suggest that there are alternative realities in play, an idea that Hogg conveys early on with some clever, destabilizing mirrored images — something definitely weird this way comes.
